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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28956009">in the afterglow of apocalypse</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/gly13/pseuds/gly13'>gly13</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>tales from the end of the world [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>NCT (Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Established Relationship, M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 05:53:20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,246</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28956009</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/gly13/pseuds/gly13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>There are shadows even in the most barren of landscapes. Spots where the air is a little too dense.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Liu Yang Yang/Na Jaemin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>tales from the end of the world [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2142147</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Challenge #4 — Awaken The World</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>in the afterglow of apocalypse</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Violet air, smoky and dense. There are shadows even in the most barren of landscapes. Spots where the air is a little too dense. Yangyang can only make out the shape of his boot because it’s black as black can be.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He treads through the rubble that sits on the ground like gaping piles of ash, movements clunky to avoid bringing his foot down on a particularly jagged piece of brick. It must have been a sight, once upon a time, this building that now litters the floor and obstructs Yangyang’s path.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He stops in his tracks to gaze up at the horizonless sky, trying to imagine it, clumsily putting together an image of some great thing he has never known, forcefully jamming together mismatched puzzle pieces of a past world.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Something solid slams into his back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why’d you stop?” Jaemin grits out from where he’s still pressed up against him and Yangyang whips around to look at him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jaemin is visible even through the haze. Quizzical and breath-taking and grumpy.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sorry, babe,” Yangyang grins and hopes that makes up for it. “Was taking a look at the scenery.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jaemin crosses his arms over his chest and the metal dangling from the bag on his back clinks together with the movement. “Because this pile of rubble is so fascinating and definitely not the same as every other pile of rubble everywhere else.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yangyang’s grin widens. “You get it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jaemin rolls his eyes but Yangyang struggles to describe it as anything other than fond.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Just go look for stuff,” he says before turning swiftly away and making his way to the end of the rubble, where a cobblestone path lined with fully intact, if abandoned, shops lies. It’s clear he’s hiding a smile.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Aye aye,” Yangyang calls after him, before setting off in the opposite direction.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He chances one glance back at the ruins of a whatever it had been. Clearly important enough to warrant being destroyed. Or maybe it hadn’t been important at all. Yangyang supposes he’ll never know.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The clocks were left behind. Which is as ironic as it is useless. Only the clocks stood the test of time, counting hours no one cared for.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe they were cared for at the time. Maybe people had looked at them, struck by fear and feeling the way each movement of the minute hand condemned them to a shorter life like a blow to the chest. Maybe they had revered them, these fantastical contraptions which captured time and played it aloud.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe they hadn’t cared. Man-made and cheap and unworthy of time.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yangyang leaves the thought for later, for when he and Jaemin are sitting in front of a fire and Jaemin hasn’t just woken up and has the patience to entertain his theories.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He turns to the storefront of what looks like a bookshop. The one next to it is boarded up with splintering wooden panels and there is bold, red spray paint with what is either a name or political statement. Either way, it’s a testament to existence, a cry to individualism.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yangyang wonders, not for the first time, if he had been born in a society, and that society had crumbled around him, how much of his self would crumble with it?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He chances a look in Jaemin’s general direction and thinks he might have an answer.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He rifles through the shop, torch made of scraps in hand, and shoves anything that might be of any use or value into his bag. He isn’t a creator, but Jaemin and Renjun could probably turn an empty battery into a new sun. Though, an empty battery would be nothing short of a miracle in itself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When he’s looked through all the shops and returns to the central pile of rubble, Jaemin is already there, standing tinkering with one of the clocks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yangyang approaches him from behind and slings his arms around his waist, pushing onto the balls of his feet to rest his chin on Jaemin’s shoulder and watch him work.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What are you thinking of making?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nothing, I don’t think,” Jaemin says, but his brows are furrowed in that way they only ever are when he’s in deep concentration. “Just interesting. Clocks always are.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s hard not to wonder about the people of the past. The people who built all these great things out of something other than the need to survive. Hard to not fumble a connection out of all the things they left behind.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yangyang craves the permanence of clocks, but is enchanted by the fleeting nature of life.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He spins Jaemin away from the clock and looks up at him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Violet air hangs around his features, deep and enticing. Eyes like the void of the sky, something wildly erratic about them. It’s unsettling. This empty gaze filled with so much. He is mad, Yangyang thinks. He is mad and he is gorgeous.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>All in all, he looks almost the same as he did when Yangyang first saw him. When he was an enigma standing in the indigo shadow of a ticking clock.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Almost. Because there’s something else there now. Something tender.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yangyang’s gaze drops to Jaemin’s mouth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The air is sweltering in the way it only ever is when it sweeps up fire and suspends it above them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yangyang pushes himself onto his tiptoes, an arm wrapping around Jaemin’s neck and pulling him close as they slot their mouths together. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Something orange burns at the corner of his eyes, even as they close.</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>They sit around the fire, digging through what they found and sorting it out.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jaemin is sat so close Yangyang is practically in his lap. It is brighter now. But it is still cold. Yangyang shivers and Jaemin presses impossibly closer.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I told you there’s not much I can make out of books,” Jaemin says into his neck.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yangyang hums, knowing where this is going.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So why do you insist on picking tens up every time we go out?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I just want to see if there’s anything interesting in them.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Where Jaemin makes up his connections with machines, because they tell the tale of the people like him that have come before him. They tell him humans have always itched to create. To mesh gears and wires and bolts and make something better than themselves.</span>
</p><p><span>But Yangyang finds his connections not in the monuments people parade, but in private musings and thoughts. It’s all well and good knowing that people have always made things, but it’s something else to know that they have felt.</span> <span>In a different time, a different world, people have felt what he feels. People have lived lives for themselves.</span></p><p>
  <span>He opens one book and something falls out, a folded square of paper, damaged and torn and beautiful.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He feels Jaemin tighten his arms around his waist and nose at the side of his head in curiosity.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yangyang unfolds the piece of paper, taking the utmost care because it is so very old and withering and holds so much life he can’t risk losing it. It’s difficult to make out parts of it, and some of the words that are clear are ones he doesn’t understand, that they don’t use anymore, but the handwriting is neat and readable and mesmerising.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s a letter of some sort. And as he reads, Yangyang finds himself wishing he had the other pieces of the puzzle.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>After all, we’ve always been headed for an apocalypse, don’t you think, my dear?</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>this didn't end up going even remotely near the direction i wanted it to go and i'm not really the biggest fan of it lmao but i still really hoped you enjoyed and please leave kudos and comments if you did</p><p>also if you stick around for after reveals this is going to be part of a series !!</p><p>thank you so much for taking the time to read! and big thanks to the mods for all their hard work organising!!&lt;3</p><p> </p><p>  <a href="https://twitter.com/whatisanult">twt</a><br/><a href="https://curiouscat.me/whatisanult">cc</a></p></blockquote></div></div>
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